Caples Lake trophy trout plant arrives from Nebraska

19-lb., 7-oz. brown caught at Huntington Lake

BY PAT YOUNG/WON Staff WriterPublished: Jun 30, 2009

KIRKWOOD — The truckload of trophy trout that were destined for Caples Lake arrived from Nebraska last week and it didn’t take long for one of the big lunkers to get caught.

On June 24th, El Dorado Irrigation District (EID) planted 1,500 trophy rainbow trout ranging from 4 to 15 pounds for a total of 9,000 pounds. This is part of the joint effort between EID and the DFG to restock Caples Lake this summer and for the next 10 years to mitigate last year’s drawdown of the lake for repairs on the dam.The trophy rainbow trout were delivered by Ron Bright and crew of Chaulk Mound Trout Ranch from Bridgeport, Nebraska — yep, that’s Nebraska, not California. The trout were loaded into six 1,000-gallon tanks on a flat bed trailer on June 23rd and driven 1200 miles to Caples Lake and planted 24 hours later.

“What a beautiful load of multi-colored rainbows they were, too,” said John Voss, owner of Caples Lake Resort. “The first 10-pound trophy rainbow was caught by George Osborne and his grandson of Camino, California. Osborne is a member of the EID Board of Directors so we were wandering if this was a set up by George, but congratulations are in order regardless.”

To show that the DFG means restocking business, a planter truck was waiting with 4,000 half-pound brook trout from Crystal Lake Hatchery near Burney. The DFG will also be delivering regularly-scheduled plants of catchable rainbows all season long.

SHAVER LAKE — A nice kokanee was all that was on Monte Smith’s mind while trolling near Gold Arrow Campground on Huntington Lake Friday evening, and the last thing he expected was a 19-pound, 7-ounce brown trout to latch onto his hoochie. But that’s what happened!

Apparently Smith, of San Diego, was trolling between the second dam and Gold Arrow Campground when the big fish hit his kokanee gear rigged with a hoochie, and the fight was on. Big brown trout are known to frequent Huntington, but generally they’re caught in the spring and fall. He’s having a reproduction of the fish made because he gutted it after having it weighed, Gilbert said.

The kokanee bite at Huntington is better than at Shaver Lake right now, and the fish are big — 15 to 171⁄2 inches now, Gilbert said. Anglers are trolling at 25 to 35 feet using hoochies and bugs, mostly between Dam 2 and Gold Arrow Campground. There’s a lot of trout from 13 to 141⁄2 inches in the mix — but nothing to match the 19-plus-pound brown Smith caught!